West Midlands Futures: Grand Challenges - Lessons Learned From Elsewhere
The report is part of the first phase the West Midlands Futures (WMF) project – the clarify phase.
This report takes insights gained from 79 academic, think-tank and government papers; 53 interviews with more than 70 interviewees from the private sector, civil service, academia, local government and think tanks; and a workshop testing initial findings (see Annex 1 for full list) to identify common lessons from around the world in successfully addressing Grand Challenges. These lessons are:
- Take collective regional leadership, set the strategic direction and settle in for the long-term.
- Build an authentic narrative on existing strengths and identity.
- Rally wide and deep political and public support to give the strategy momentum.
- Don’t just fix markets, shape and create them.
- Take risks, experiment and learn from doing.
- Collaborate with and crowd-in partners.
- Invest in internal capabilities and capacities.
- Focus economic and innovation strategy on raising the productivity ceiling and floor.
- Use policy tools to pre-distribute and re-distribute the benefits of economic prosperity so all benefit.
- Consider economic & urban development together.
In the next phases of WMF we will explore how these lessons could be applied to the West Midlands’ own Grand Challenges.